Teams of residents in 16 golf carts spread out through Gull Aire Village, a 55+ community in Oldsmar, to collect food for the hungry one day last month.

It was part of a six-week drive to stock the shelves at Oldsmar Cares, an all-volunteer organization that provides stop-gap rent and utility assistance, a food pantry and a clothes closet for those in need in the greater Oldsmar area.

The effort was organized by Debbie Brown and Judy Dentici, Gull Aire residents who also volunteer their time at the Oldsmar Cares food pantry.

"We noticed that after the holidays the food pantry stock was dwindling, so we decided to have a food drive here in Gull Aire," said Brown, who announced the food drive in the community newsletter.

Anne Marie LeBlanc, another Gull Aire resident who volunteers for Oldsmar Cares, brought the food drive to the attention of the Gull Aire Village Social Club, where members Les and Ginny Johnson suggested adding the community-wide, door-to-door food collection.

The couple organized the one-day blitz by dividing the neighborhood into 16 sections with teams of three assigned to collect food from specific homes. They also helped secure all the golf carts and volunteers.

"Thanks to our great friends and residents, we got together 52 workers and we had a very successful morning," said Ginny Johnson, who affirmed, "Our answer to Oldsmar Cares is yes, Gull Aire Village cares."

Sporting signature yellow Oldsmar Cares T-shirts, volunteers collected food from more than 600 homes and transported it to the clubhouse in a parade of golf carts. The Gull Aire Village Social Club also donated $100 toward the purchase of food.

"To say this food drive was a team effort is an understatement," said Brenda Gaulin,Oldsmar Cares chairwoman.

"The residents of Gull Aire Village are extremely generous and we can't thank them enough for their support," Gaulin said of the effort.

• • •

Nine students from St. Cecelia Interparochial School in Clearwater participated in the Pinellas Regional Science and Engineering Fair held Feb. 8 at Seminole Middle School. All the students received awards, including Dana Perrott, whose environmental science project, "Wave Breakers," earned the top spot in the junior division as well as Best of Show.

Category awards:

Eric Gallagher, "Forever Young," fourth place (botany); Ben Krueger, "The Tale of the Three Turning Turbines," fourth place (physics); Nathalie Sieh, "It's Better to Flap than Snap," third place (physics); Tyler Paul, "Heat Shock," second place (physics); Sydney Opyrchal, "Flight or Light?," second place (physics); Shea Wheeler, "Hey, Yolks — Check Out this Eggs-periment!," second place (chemistry); Amanda Lima-Lugo, "Now You See Me, Now You Don't," second place (chemistry); and Esteban Restrepo, "The Ultimate Ulcer," first place (medicine and health).

Projects are scored using a rubric, allowing for more than one second and third place winner.

Special awards were given to Opyrchal, who received the Bay Area Manufacturers Association award of $125 and an invitation to present her project at the BAMA annual meeting; and Restrepo, who earned the Science Supervisor Award ($25) and the M.A. Barton Award for Medical Excellence ($75).

Perrott, Opyrchal and Restrepo will be joining 18 other winners to represent Pinellas County at the statewide fair in Lakeland April 8-10.

• • •

Marissa Streng, a sixth-grader at Clearwater's Saint Paul's School, made a guest appearance Feb. 19 on the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she presented her invention, the Puff-n-Fluff, a dog drier that she patented and manufactured.

The Puff-n-Fluff was a result of Marissa's third-grade project for the Invention Convention, an annual regional and statewide invention competition for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Her invention not only took first place at the school level, but also at the state level.

Two years later, Marissa was contacted by the producers of Fallon's show to appear with two other star inventors.

During the segment, Marissa's dog, Mojo, accompanied her on stage as she explained to host JimmyFallon how her invention works and why she created it.

The fact that it was Fallon's first week hosting the Tonight Show made the appearance even more memorable for the sixth-grader.

She and the other inventors received $5,000 to put toward their education.

PINELLAS PARK — The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office late Saturday said detectives arrested a 14-year-old boy and accused him of posting a threat to a school on his Snapchat account.Edward Charles Osgood, who attends Lealman Innovation Academy, was a...

1. Was editor of her high school newspaper, president of her 4-H club.2. Started stripping at age 17 in Baton Rouge, La.3. Made her first porn film with a girlfriend.4. Took her stage name from the Motley Crue bassist, who named his son Storm, and fr...

MUNICH — President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said Saturday there was "incontrovertible" evidence of a Russian plot to disrupt the 2016 U.S. election, a blunt statement that shows how significantly the new criminal charges leveled by an...

A prominent Republican political donor demanded on Saturday that the party pass legislation to restrict access to guns, and vowed not to contribute to any candidates or electioneering groups that did not support a ban on the sale of military-style fi...

ST. PETERSBURG — A red heart-shaped balloon rose above crowd of several hundred people that had gathered at Williams Park on Saturday evening to mourn Wednesday’s school shooting in Broward County and to protest gun violence.Below the balloon, signs ...

TAMPA — Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 this year. The Florida Orchestra performed two of his works Friday, the second of which paired the dances from West Side Story with the overture to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.The orches...

TAMPA — In the center of the nightclub, between the cigar case and bustling bar, a giant screen blankets the back wall. Usually, ads for drink specials and coming attractions scroll across.But Friday night, a life-size picture of President Donald Tru...

TAMPA — Firefighters found a man dead inside a burned-down mobile home Saturday.Tampa Fire Rescue got a call just after 4:30 p.m. that a single-wide mobile home at the 100 block of East Linebaugh Avenue was in flames.The man’s identity was not releas...

Warning: This story quotes graphic material.Before he killed 17 people at a South Florida high school, Nikolas Cruz repeatedly threatened an ex-classmate who had started dating his former girlfriend, according to a report in Buzzfeed News."I’m going ...

TAMPA — Police found a dead man inside an apartment in the 5200 block of Sonora Court Friday after 3 p.m.Who the man is or how long he’s been dead is not yet clear, police said. The victim appears to have been killed in some sort of "homicidal violen...